It's possible to keep your personal information safe on the Internet, but you do need to be careful. Lance Cottrell offers privacy tips for savvy surfers.

Here's a detailed discussion of why Linux and Mac systems are more secure than Windows systems, and will be even if they become more popular. Though the article makes a few good points, it seems to completely miss the reason why Windows systems are so popular in the first place.

Consumers like weak security. Being able to download a screensaver off the Internet and get it up and running in minutes is a good thing. Being able to open word processing documents directly from your email program is a good thing. Any security approach that makes computers significantly less convenient to use simply isn't going to work.

That's why Microsoft's new perimeter security approach makes sense. It's much easier to use firewalls and other tools to keep malicious code away from the desktop than it is to solve the social engineering problems that make the desktop vulnerable.

Bill Simmons captures exactly what it was like watching the Red Sox win last night. I'm not sure I can take potentially 14 more games like this.... But the magic number is now 8.

More on the fight between junk and legitimate email. The Boston Globe surveys a variety of tactics for fighting junk, some effective, some not, and some worse than the disease.

2475 words since my last update, bringing me to 200,595 since January 1. That's about two weeks longer to get to 200K than I expected, but I'm still very happy about the milestone. Onward!

There's new stuff up in many parts of the site today. In particular, I'm launching a bimonthly newsletter, which is likely to be especially relevant to semiconductor and thin film industry people who don't already follow the site regularly. Feel free to tell your friends about it. Also a new feature article and a variety of other updates, all accessible from the front page.